Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has requested a pre-trial speaking ban for ex-President Donald Trump.
The background for the drastic demand for a ban on speech in connection with Trump’s trial is the ex-president’s verbal attacks against the Justice Department and the judge. Trump is endangering the trial scheduled for March with inflammatory rhetoric, according to the special investigator appointed by the Justice Department.
Verbal attacks led to threats
Donald Trump’s verbal attacks on Justice Department employees, the Washington public and Judge Tanya Chutkan have already led to threats from his supporters, according to special investigator Jack Smith. The former U.S. president’s rhetoric could have “tangible effects on the impartiality of the jury pool” from which jurors are selected for his trial, the report adds.
Witnesses also possibly influenced
Witnesses, too, apparently could be influenced by Donald Trump’s fierce remarks. They “could reasonably be feared to become the next targets of the defendant’s attacks,” Smith said. The court should thus order the Republican to refrain from disparaging, inflammatory and intimidating statements, he said.
One of Trump’s drastic statements was, “If you persecute me, I will persecute you,” Smith said in his motion. Furthermore, the ex-president called the judge in charge, Chutkan, a “fraud.” According to Trump, the U.S. capital Washington is “dirty and crime-ridden” and its population is “more than 95 percent anti-Trump.”
Image: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, Donald Trump (27150816364), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (no changes made)
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